


The Hive

by BeautifulFiction



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221b collection, Kissing, M/M, Murder, expect a variety of themes, some explicit, some gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:52:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 54
Words: 13,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulFiction/pseuds/BeautifulFiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of 221bs and other shorts from the Sherlock universe. Each chapter is stand alone. Some are gen, some are John/Sherlock. This is just a little bit of everything :D<br/>If you hit the "Entire Work" button at the top, you won't have to keep pressing "next" to read each one :D</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Note: Please do not redistribute my fanfiction on other archives or sites such as goodreads or ebooks tree without my express permission. Thank you :)</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prompt: Promise

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Улей (The Hive)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7980097) by [MiledyV](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiledyV/pseuds/MiledyV)



> **[Now Available in Russian](http://ficbook.net/readfic/1714882)**  
>  ~~~

‘Give me your word?’ His mother’s voice was reed thin, a whisper of sound to match the fading wraith of her body. ‘Tell me you’ll stop taking those wretched chemicals?’

Sherlock pursed his lips, his hands shaking from the ebb of his high. He looked at the window, the door, the floor – everywhere except at the soon-to-be-corpse of his mother. He stayed silent.

***

‘Swear it.’ Mycroft’s voice was desperate, a hushed litany underscored by the metronome of the pulse-monitor. ‘I want your oath that this won’t happen again.’

After the third overdose in as many months, Sherlock did not have the strength to turn his back or voice a cool retort, so he closed his eyes. At least that way he did not have to see the helpless grief in his brother’s face.

***

‘Promise?’ The word felt strange on his lips, a request rather than a demand, far too tremulous for his liking. John was still staring at the object in his hands, his blunt fingers strong around its innocuous corners and the chemicals within. ‘I don’t need it anymore.’

Blue eyes lifted to meet Sherlock’s gaze, and while he could not discern every nuance of John’s emotion, he was familiar enough with pride to bask in its presence.

‘I promise, Sherlock. I’ll get rid of the box.’


	2. Prompt: Knitting

‘Let him go.’ 

Sherlock’s voice sounded lethal: vowels apical and consonants falling into place with precision. Three syllables, and John felt his captor tense. 

‘Do not force me to repeat myself.’

It was a threat, innocent words made malicious by the surgical slice of Sherlock’s tongue: vicious, acerbic and merciless – armageddon for the man whose blade shivered near John’s jugular.

‘Or what?’

The world exploded into motion. John stumbled away as the knife clattered on the ground. Skull cracked on the alley-wall, and the mugger-turned-hostage-taker was face down in the filth: unconscious and unarmed.

John rubbed his throat, blinking at Sherlock as blue flashing lights bounced along the narrow space. Gloved hands brushed his pulse as Sherlock’s gaze raked over his body, seeing all.

‘What did you threaten him with?’ John asked.

Sherlock shrugged and held up something long, thin, and blunt. It took him a moment to recognise the shape: harmless, unless in the hands of one Sherlock Holmes.

‘A knitting needle?’

Sherlock grinned as John sagged against the wall. ‘He had a knife and you had a –’ John shook his head, hysterical laughter bubbling dangerously in his throat as he met Sherlock’s eyes.

‘I can’t work out whether you’re brilliant, or a bastard.’

Sherlock’s eyes danced as he pocketed the implement of John’s rescue.

‘How about both?’


	3. Prompt: Batik

A dead body, covered in wax and dredged from the Thames. Once, it might have been the strangest thing John had ever seen, but after so long at Sherlock’s side he barely even blinked.

Within an hour, the female culprit stood flanked by two police officers amidst the steaming bustle of a textiles workshop while Sherlock laid out the details with his usual flair.

‘Jealousy,’ Sherlock explained. ‘Your boyfriend was cheating on you with a co-worker. You shoved your competition into the wax vat.’ Sherlock smirked as the young woman bared her teeth.

‘You dumped the body in the river. The wax solidified, leaving enough preserved evidence to lead us straight here. Although, even without that, it’s not the most challenging crime to unravel.’

He picked up a solid block of wax, tossing it in his hand. ‘Japanese origin, high oil content. Perfect for this kind of work, and specifically made for this workshop. A dead give-away’

John grinned, shaking his head as Lestrade bundled the suspect away. ‘Amazing,’ he murmured, catching sight of Sherlock’s smug half smile. ‘Now I just need to think of a title for my blog post. What do you reckon? Murder in the Mill?’

Sherlock trailed a finger over an exquisitely decorated bolt of fabric before meeting John’s eye with a smile.

‘A Blunder in Batik.’


	4. Prompt: Baking

Simple, straightforward, child’s-play… Those three words were completely inapplicable to the current project. There must be some nuance that he was missing, because he refused to believe that something everyone else found so easy could be this difficult.

The kitchen was a disaster. Scents of charcoal lingered in the air: sharp, acrid, pervasive. Albumen stained the work surfaces, and a fine white powder hung in the air. Granular crystals were scattered all over the table, and Sherlock realised he had been arranging them into lines so it looked like he had been cooking up illegal narcotics. He scowled at them as he heard footsteps on the stairs: military, precise, slight limp – John.

Damn.

The front door opened on a bloom of silence, and he glanced up to see John surveying the scene, mouth slack and eyebrows raised. He took in the mess of flour and egg and other ingredients, and finally, Sherlock himself.

Blue eyes glowed with mirth, and his lips twitched: a smile ill-repressed.

‘Told you to wait for me.’

‘Mrs Hudson can do it!’ Sherlock snapped. ‘Why can’t I?’

‘Because it involves long period of patience, and you’re easily distracted,’ John said with a sigh, wrinkling his nose at the crunch of his shoes over the sugar-coated floor. ‘Honestly, Sherlock, how can anyone make such a mess baking?’


	5. Prompt: Robot!Lock

‘It’s amazing,’ John breathed, his hand half-outstretched towards Sherlock’s skin. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Neither has anyone else,’ Sherlock murmured, those vivid eyes watching him as if he were expecting distaste to ooze across John’s features. ‘Most people find it disturbing.’

John’s fingers brushed the back of Sherlock’s knuckles, sensing heat and strength. Yet now he knew the truth, he could feel that nothing as natural as bones or blood lay beneath the pale canvas of synthetic flesh. ‘What happened?’

He expected silence or evasion. It was, after all, a very personal question.

‘There was a fire – burns. My father’s connections in biomedical fields were put to good use.’ Sherlock turned his hand over, wrapping his grasp around John’s fingers. ‘It was theoretical, but they were desperate.’

He did not meet John’s gaze as he continued, ‘My consciousness, intelligence, functions and memories were transferred to a state-of-the-art computing system, which was then housed in a prototype. I was nine when I – when my body died.’

He swallowed, and when he spoke again, there was a tremor to his words. ‘There is no precedent for something like me. Am I alive, or not? A human or a machine? People cannot decide. All they care about is that this is not the body into which I was born.’


	6. Prompt: Birthday

‘Still feeling old?’ Sherlock asked.

John looked up from studying his bruised knuckles, seeing the subtle smile playing at the corners of Sherlock’s lips. They were sitting in the back of an ambulance while a paramedic examined them. Not that there was much to treat. Steri-strips held the edges of a gash on Sherlock’s temple together, and a truly impressive bruise turned the prominence of one cheekbone tumultuous shades of purple-black. He wore both like a medal, his chin lifted and those eyes sharp.

‘Please tell me you didn’t set that up,’ John murmured, but the grin that curved his lips gave him away. Only yesterday he had been complaining about his advancing years. Thirty-nine was still young, but forty? That was undeniably middle-aged. ‘Seven of them, Sherlock?’

‘And you hardly batted an eyelash.’ The smile had broadened, taking on an approving edge.

John smothered a laugh, shaking his head in disbelief. It was hard to argue when the adrenaline was still rushing through his veins, flushing his skin with success and banishing the weight of his forty years as if they were no more than morning mist.

Outside, the solemn toll of Big Ben rang out across the city: Midnight. Sherlock glanced out of the ambulance doors before looking back at John, his eyes gleaming with amusement .

‘Happy Birthday.’


	7. Prompt: Mycroft's Gift

No one would blame him if he became a serial killer, not if they saw the seething mass of idiots who currently occupied every floor of Harrod’s. The sight of them was repulsive: mindless drones of stupidity. 

‘Stop it.’ John sounded far too amused, and Sherlock glanced in his direction. ‘Bit not good, planning to kill Christmas shoppers.’

‘How could you tell?’

‘I can see the expression on your face,’ John explained, taking a deep breath like a man girding his loins.

‘I would have spared you,’ Sherlock pointed out. 

‘Good to know. Come on, we’ve just got one last thing to get. Something for Mycroft.’ 

They considered the crowd once more, and Sherlock felt something threatening race down his spine. They could be here for hours. 

No.

‘Hey, where are you going?’ John demanded as Sherlock turned and strode out of the door. ‘You have to get your brother something!’

‘He will appreciate this far more than anything wrapped up with a ribbon, John.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘A favour, within reason. To be redeemed at his leisure.’ Sherlock pulled a face, knowing the potential worth of such a thing.

‘You sure?’ John raised an eyebrow, perceptive enough, no doubt, to see the potential for regrets when Mycroft collected on the bargain.

Clenching his teeth, Sherlock nodded. ‘Anything to avoid that brouhaha.’

~~~

Brouhaha = uproar/chaos :D


	8. Prompt: Collection

‘What is this?’

John looked up at the mild, baritone question. His gaze fell on the container in Sherlock’s hand, and dull annoyance flared through him.

‘I’ve told you to stay out of my room,’ he grouched, getting to his feet and holding out his hand. ‘It’s nothing important. Give it here.’

Sherlock swayed back, moving out of John’s reach as he lifted the lid and treated the contents to his usual cuspate scrutiny. ‘If I didn’t know better, I would say it was junk,’ he said, pulling out a paying-in slip and reading it. ‘But that’s wrong, isn’t it?’

John sighed, trying to ignore the faint flush that swelled across his cheeks. It was not really a collection; more a little hoard of pointless things. He had hoped Sherlock would dismiss it as irrelevant, but the damn man thought in webs – of course he would see the connections.

‘They’re objects you picked up on our cases. Trifles.’ Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, his head cocked to one side. ‘But I don’t understand why.’

He wanted to say “So I never forget. Not who did it or what happened but what it felt like being at your side,” but John knew Sherlock would find that even more baffling than the box itself. Instead he shook his head, smiled and shrugged.

‘Just because.’


	9. Prompt: Feather

Shades of sable and ebony surrendered to hues of midnight violet, teal and deepest sapphire; the advanced guard of a hundred petrol colours shining amidst the quills. At first glance, the feather was black, but on closer examination there was significantly more to see. Much like the body which lay on the lawn in front of the Tower of London, half-hidden amidst the sparse undergrowth.

‘You got an answer from me?’ Lestrade asked.

‘Check her blood-alcohol levels; you’ll find they’re dangerously high.’ Sherlock shrugged. ‘In the vernacular, she was pissed and fell over.’

John scratched his cheek. ‘The wound on her forehead suggests concussion, but I doubt it killed her.’

‘No, this was an unkindness.’

The DI shifted, his frown perplexed. ‘Well, yeah. It’s murder.’

‘Your killer was an unkindness: a group of ravens,’ Sherlock clarified. ‘Corvids are attracted to lustrous objects. The ravens took her earrings, bracelets…’ He indicated a deep hole on her throat. A vicious, repeated peck. ‘Her necklace. If she had been conscious, the puncture to her carotid could have been treated. As it was, she never awoke before she bled out.’

‘And her eyes?’ Lestrade asked, sounding sick.

Sherlock looked at the blank, bloody sockets. As if on cue, the ravens struck up their raucous chatter, crying out their guilt.

‘They’ll be away with the birds.’


	10. Prompt: Bubblegum

‘Sometimes I hate my job.’ John stalked into the flat, dumping his bag and hurrying into the bathroom.

‘Then quit.’ Sherlock’s suggestion came from the vague direction of the sofa. However, it seemed his curiosity was piqued, because the volume of his words increased as he approached, one eyebrow raised as he took in the problem. ‘Well, that’s a vile habit in which I did not think you would indulge.’

‘It wasn’t me,’ John snapped, trying to work out what to do. ‘It was a patient.’

‘How inappropriate.’ There was something intrigued in Sherlock’s voice, and John clenched his teeth tight. ‘How exactly did it get in your hair?’

‘Can we not go into this?’ John demanded, plucking at the sticky mess. ‘Give me a hand will you?’

‘Hmmm, it’s no good. It’s dried like cement. You needed a haircut anyway.’

Sherlock shoved John down onto the closed toilet seat, his fingers surprisingly gentle in the tangled mess as he worked. Eventually, he started speaking, his deep voice almost meditative. ‘Increased pulse rate, short, sharp breaths, clenched fists, pallid cheeks…. You’re expressing an anxiety response. Interesting.’

‘What is?’

‘You appear to have chiclephobia.’ After a few delicate snips, Sherlock finally plucked the pink mess free and pitched it in the bin, allowing John to relax at last. ‘A fear of bubble-gum.’


	11. Prompt: Bees

Raised voices echoed through the cottage, out of place on a warm summer’s day . Six-year-old Sherlock crept away, ghosting over the gravel’s betrayal and across the groomed lawn to the distant meadows.

He threw himself down amidst the long grass and wild-flowers, feeling the molasses honey of the sunlight warm his skin as the buzz of insects replaced the shrill cry of human disappointment.

Something landed on his bare knee, and he paused to watch. The honey bee’s tawny body twitched as it stumbled, questing antennae trembling as gauzy wings twitched and shone in shades of gold and grey.

The distant bang of the house’s front door made Sherlock jump, his hand moving fitfully, and he hissed in pain at the sharpness of the sting. The bee took off, leaving its barb behind. Perhaps someone else would hate the creature for the pain it had caused, but Sherlock knew better. It was done without spite, a simple display of the insect’s dichotomy: small and apparently benign, but always ready with a judicious sting.

Over time, he deleted the cottage and the argument. Then one day, he met John Watson, beautiful in his own way and seemingly harmless.

A gun’s report, a dead cabbie, John’s face a picture of innocence.

And, for the first time in years, Sherlock thought of bees.


	12. Prompt: Bonfire Night

‘This is pointless,’ Sherlock muttered, his breath steaming in front of him. ‘A banal excuse for people to set fire to something and eat substandard sausages.’

‘I thought you’d like the explosions,’ John muttered around his last mouthful of hot-dog. ‘Besides, it’s a British thing. You have to have fireworks on Bonfire Night.’

‘We are celebrating someone’s failure to kill a king who was on the throne more than four centuries ago.’ Sherlock narrowed his eyes as another explosion echoed across Regent’s Park and an “Ooooh!” of appreciation rose from the crowd.

‘And nothing upsets you more than failed murder.’

‘Regicide,’ Sherlock corrected. ‘The only interesting aspect is the chemistry involved, and it’s not fascinating enough to make it worth standing outside in the dark. You’re freezing.’ He watched a shudder trembled along John’s frame. ‘Come here.’

Sherlock plucked open the buttons of his coat before pulling John back against his chest and enclosing him within the wool. He expected a protest – this did rather blur the line of friendship, after all – but although John’s cheeks looked flushed, his tension soon dissolved as he breathed out a sigh.

‘Thanks,’ he murmured, tipping his face up to the sky. ‘That’s perfect.’

And so they stood, warm and content, amidst November’s chill, both tucked within the folds of Sherlock’s Belstaff.


	13. Prompt: Brawn

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, his expression brimming with disdain. ‘What did you just call me?’

‘Skinny,’ John replied. ‘Weedy, scrawny… take your pick. You don’t eat, therefore you have no muscle-mass, which is why in a dangerous situation, I go first.’ He folded his arms and lifted his chin. ‘If you punched someone, I doubt they’d even feel it.’

They had been flat-mates for little over a month, and while John clearly felt comfortable enough for brutal honesty, it seemed he had yet to learn a fundamental truth that Sherlock put to good use: appearances could be deceiving.

‘I can hold my own in a fight.’

‘Prove it.’

John had no time for more than a flinch before he was on the floor, Sherlock’s hand behind his head to cushion the doctor’s skull and his body pressed down on top of John’s frame, pinning him breathlessly in place.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, knowing that John could feel every inch of him. Perhaps his muscles did not bulge, but they were more than adequate. He simply kept them hidden beneath the clever cut of his clothes until it was necessary to put them to use.

‘You see, but you don’t observe,’ he chided softly. ‘There is more to me than meets the eye, and there is more to strength than mere brawn.’


	14. Prompt: Bored

‘Where is it?’

John swore at the low growl of Sherlock’s voice in his ear. Turning around, he looked up into flinty eyes. Even like this, angry and dangerous, they made John’s breath shudder in his throat, and he tried not to squeak as he found his voice.

‘Where’s what?’

Sherlock’s brow pleated in a scowl. ‘You’ve hidden my violin, and you’ve done a better job of it than you did with your gun, which I’ve already found.’ He waved the unloaded weapon in emphasis, and John snatched it away. ‘Now, where is it?’

‘I warned you.’ John lifted his chin as Sherlock huffed. ‘I told you that if I found any more human remains in the bath, there would be consequences.’ 

‘The intestines are a vital experiment!’

‘They’re disgusting,’ John corrected. ‘Consider yourself punished. I’m not telling you where to find your violin.’

They stood there, Sherlock fuming and John determined, waiting for the other to break.

John won, and he smirked to himself as Sherlock stalked off. He moved with lithe grace, vicious and predatory as he began to tear the flat apart, and John settled back to watch. 

The truth was, the blood and guts barely made him flinch, but after three days without a case, at least a game of hunt-the-violin would stop Sherlock from being bored.


	15. Prompt: Scream

John was trying not to laugh, his mirth obvious in the faint roundness of his cheeks and the way his eyes danced. 

Sherlock ignored him.

‘Anderson had a good point, you know.’

‘Unlikely,’ Sherlock murmured, wishing he could forget the entire day: a boring case, an unfortunate mistake and Anderson looking as if all his Christmases had come at once. ‘In my defence, you screamed. Not in a very manly way, either.’

‘You’d have screamed too,’ John pointed out, unperturbed by the memory of what had been a very undignified episode. ‘It landed on my shoulder.’

‘And you proceeded to brush it off onto the floor next to me.’ Sherlock fought down a shudder. ‘Remind me to thank you.’

‘How was I meant to know it was the murder weapon? You’re the one who squashed it.’

It had been the action of a moment. Spiders had never been a problem for Sherlock, but even he drew the line at something so repulsively large and obviously toxic. He had slammed a nearby yellow pages down on the creature without thinking. It had been – messy.

‘I don’t know why everyone made such a fuss,’ he muttered, lips twitching in a smile as John lost his fight against his giggles. ‘There was still enough of it left to put in an evidence bag.’


	16. Prompt: Insults

‘I should have punched him in the face!’ John hissed, every step rigid with ill-restrained anger.

Sherlock hid a sigh, because John was angry for him rather than at him, enraged by Anderson’s stupid implications. ‘He is not the first person to say such things.’

‘I kept expecting you to cut him down to size.’

‘I didn’t have to. You glared at him and he almost urinated on himself.’

John turned, an awkward expression on his face as if his anger were bleeding into grief. ‘You don’t believe it, do you?’

Sherlock paused, thinking of times when others had voiced the opinion that he should have been drowned at birth – as if there was ever a good reason for such barbaric behaviour. ‘It’s possible that what he said was true. Even as an infant I was – not normal. Who knows what might have happened a couple of centuries ago?’

Abruptly John’s hand was in his, fingers cold against his palm as they squeezed, tight and fierce. ‘I’d have been there,’ he said, despite the impossibility of time-travel and the unlikelihood of the same soul somehow transcending lifespan. ‘I’d have told you then what I’m telling you now.’ John ducked his head, his voice softening into something that sounded like a vow. ‘You’re amazing, Sherlock, and you always will be.’


	17. Prompt: Train

‘TRAIN!’

The warning was nearly a scream, Lestrade and Donovan crying out from the distant platform as the rails began to sing.

‘Shit!’ John spat.

‘Keep moving!’ Sherlock ordered. ‘There’s no time to turn back.’

‘We can’t outrun a tube-train, Sherlock. It’s faster than us!’

‘You’ll have to trust me! Don’t stop!’

With a wheezed curse, John tried to focus his mind on the ground in front of him rather than the racing, rushing din that was filling the confined space of the tunnel. The train sounded its horn, a banshee’s cry, and John choked in shock as he was abruptly dragged to one side.

‘Take a shallow breath, and hold it,’ Sherlock ordered, pressing John into the narrow alcove. Pipes dug into his back, biting into his spine as Sherlock crowded him close. The chine of his hips pressed against John’s belly, the hard stretch of strong thighs and broad flare of Sherlock’s chest pinning him in place as he braced his hands either side of John’s head. Weakly, desperately, John’s hands clenched in Sherlock’s coat, pulling the fabric taut as time ran out.

It was Armageddon: noise and fear, breathless, useless air and Sherlock’s heart racing against his own, the only thing John understood amidst the chaos.

A moment later, the train was gone.

Death had passed them by.


	18. Prompt: Christmas Dinners

Mycroft Holmes was aware that adults spoke with more than mere words. Locked within the bastions of their sentences was a wealth of unspoken meaning.

Which was why, at Christmas dinner, he listened. His relatives were much more careless when drinking, and he could discern everything that wasn’t being said. It was the beginning of a life-long skill, the improvement of which was only hampered by his younger brother’s habit of flicking peas.

‘Stop it,’ Mycroft ordered, tempted to lash out with his foot. ‘Eat your vegetables.’

‘Abominable,’ Sherlock retorted, but quietly. Uncle Theston was a psychiatrist, and Sherlock adjusted his behaviour in the presence of their extended family, lest the conversation disintegrate into a stream of uncomfortable diagnoses. ‘You eat them.’

‘No.’ He turned away, trying to listen. His father was discussing China, and Mycroft could hear the fear lingering beneath his statements.

It was only when he glanced back that he realised what Sherlock had done. With obvious precision, he had launched his peas, one by one, across the breadth of the table to land on Mycroft’s plate. 

He considered raising a fuss, but held himself back. After all, the effort showed a strong knowledge of trajectory and propulsion, as well as good coordination.

Instead, he raised an eyebrow, summing up his opinion of Sherlock in one word.

‘Brat.’


	19. Prompt: Eating

‘If you eat that, I’m moving out.’ John’s threat hung in the air, reinforced by the belligerent jut of his chin.

Sherlock paused, a forkful of meat from the murderer’s plate halfway to his lips. Behind John, Lestrade and Donovan were watching with hynotised horror, blinded by their (no-doubt inaccurate) assumptions. ‘Why?’

‘Sherlock. He’s a cannibal. That’s probably what’s left of Lisa Jackson. I don’t care how curious you are, I am not letting you try human flesh.’

‘Wrong.’ With a sigh, Sherlock gestured around the room. ‘Don’t you see? The whole thing has been elaborately staged. Teeth marks on human bone, but they’re canine. Blood in a wineglass, but its been treated for transfusion. It’s not seen the inside of anyone’s veins for months.’

He indicated the large, steel door, out of place in a domestic kitchen. ‘You’ll find all the bodies but the first one dumped, whole and uneaten, in the walk-in freezer, judging by the scuff marks on the floor. He wanted you to believe he had consumed them so he could enter an insanity plea.’

‘And the first victim?’ Lestrade asked.

‘Geoffery Dean. Postman. Eaten by the dog.’

John blinked, pulling a face as Sherlock took a bite. ‘So what’s that?’

Sherlock considered the common-place flavour.

‘Beef.’


	20. Prompt: CIA

‘Well, look who it is.’

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, allowing his gaze to slip over the pistol aimed at his head to the man behind it. Chiselled jaw, nondescript suit: CIA. The last time he had seen that face, it had been unconscious after repeatedly crashing into Mrs Hudson’s bins: a justifiable punishment.

‘I heard you were a fake – and dead.’

‘Old news,’ Sherlock replied. ‘I’ve been back in London for a year.’

‘But no Doctor Watson.’ Capped teeth, expensively repaired, flashed in a grin. ‘I guess he’s had enough of you.’ 

‘Not exactly.’ Sherlock smirked as the Browning’s safety hammer clicked back, echoing in the silence of the embassy.

The smile fell from the agent’s face as he tried to glance over his shoulder without moving his head. ‘Still his back-up, Doctor?’

‘Still playing spy?’ John replied. ‘You Americans should give up. You’ve always been rubbish at it.’ He glanced at Sherlock with a grin. ‘Did you get what we need?’

Sherlock nodded, feeling the USB stick in his pocket. ‘A shoddy attempt at espionage. America will apologise for trying, we’ll apologise for catching them, and you –’

He moved quickly: a sharp punch to the solar-plexus and, as the man bent double, a knee to the nose. 

‘You will learn that John is far more than mere “back-up”.’


	21. Prompt: Rain

Dove grey light filled the bedroom, its quivering glow divided by the crystalline shadows of raindrops running down the window. Beyond the glass, London soldiered on beneath pregnant clouds, the city’s neon made kaleidoscopic by the storm.

Normally, John hated the rain. It drenched him to the skin and dragged the cold into his bones, but sheltered within the warm bower of the bed, it was easy to appreciate its distant influence.

He sighed, smiling as a strong arm tightened around his waist and Sherlock’s nose nuzzled into the skin between his shoulder-blades.

‘No cases,’ Sherlock murmured. ‘None worth getting out of bed for, anyway.’

‘Thank God,’ he replied, turning over and nudging Sherlock onto his back before draping himself possessively across Sherlock’s chest. ‘Stay?’

It was a quiet request, one that John expected to be denied. Waking up to find Sherlock still at his side was rare in itself, but expecting him to linger only led to disappointment.

Sherlock gave a lazy hum, stretching his body in a long, sinuous line. Muscles shifted beneath John’s body, scattering his lethargy and catching his interest. 

‘I’ll get bored.’

John lifted his head and raised an eyebrow. With a roll of his spine, he nudged his growing erection against Sherlock’s hip, smirking as he heard his lover’s purr of appreciation.

‘Want to bet?’


	22. Prompt: Where Am I?/Scotland./Why?

‘Where am I?’ John asked, staring out of the train window at the rain-swept countryside. He had fallen asleep hours ago, and now he felt lost and disoriented.

‘Scotland.’ Sherlock’s response sounded unconcerned, and John’s mouth went slack.

‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘Sherlock, the case was in York!’

‘We went through York about two-and-a-half hours ago,’ Sherlock murmured, apparently engrossed in his book.

‘And we didn’t get off the train because?’ John asked, scrubbing at his eyes before folding his arms and levelling as fierce a glare as he could manage in Sherlock’s direction.

‘The case in York is obvious. Dead heiress, missing fortune: dull.’ Sherlock shrugged. ‘I solved it ten minutes after we left King’s Cross and texted my conclusion to the local police shortly after, by which time you were catching up on some sleep, which you sorely need.’ He hesitated, looking embarrassed before admitting, ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’

John paused, his annoyance fading. It was hard to remain belligerent when faced with the simple surprise of Sherlock doing something thoughtful.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured, smiling as Sherlock hummed in acknowledgement. ‘Go on then, who killed the heiress?’

Now Sherlock looked fractionally pained. ‘A man called Mr Roberts.’ At John’s baffled expression, he drew in a deep breath, pursing his lips before uttering the despicable cliché. ‘The butler.’


	23. Prompt: Universe

‘It’s important. Look.’ John grabbed his wrist, guiding Sherlock’s pointing finger along the dim, sequin stars in London’s sky, half-drowned out by the lights. ‘The plough, right?’

‘That looks nothing like a plough,’ Sherlock muttered.

‘It doesn’t look like a bear, either, but its real name is Ursa Major.’ John shrugged, a complicated shuffle of warm muscle at Sherlock’s side. ‘The Americans call it the big dipper.’

‘A roller-coaster?’

‘I think it’s a ladle.’ There was a moment of silence as the constellation was given due consideration before John shook his head dismissively. ‘It’s not the one that matters, anyway, it just helps you find the star that does.’

Gently, he nudged Sherlock’s arm so that he was pointing to a seed of light that gleamed weakly nearby. ‘Polaris. The pole star. If you’re lost, anywhere in the northern hemisphere –’

‘I have GPS.’

‘Sherlock.’ John’s sigh whispered against his ear. ‘Assume you don’t. You’ve just got the clothes on your back and you’re lost, right? If you can find that star, you’re sorted. It doesn’t move, not much anyway.’

His fingers tightened on Sherlock’s wrist, a brief, fretful flutter of sensation that, later, would make him wonder if John knew of the things to come: fairy-tales and a fall.

‘That’s north. Find that star, and it will lead you back.’


	24. Prompt: Oath

Sherlock Holmes was a gentleman. 

It was an odd conclusion, of that John was well aware, but everything he did reeked of class and a pedigree that went back centuries. He always appeared to be well-dressed; princely even when wearing nothing but a bed-sheet. He had arrogance down to a fine art, but he held open doors as if basic etiquette ran thick in his veins. He swore so rarely that a single curse was enough to send a thrill along John’s nerves and make desire stir in his groin.

Twice in their acquaintance John had heard Sherlock use words that he would consider crass. Four, if he was being a prude, which, since he was a soldier, was not an issue. Every time it made his breath catch and his face burn, because Sherlock made mild vulgarity sound utterly obscene.

It made him human and base: touchable, and John’s hands itched to coax a profane symphony from those lips with the slick delve of his fingers and the slap of flesh-on-flesh.

Which was why, now he had the chance, John bit his lip, holding the reins of his self-control in a death-grip as he thrust his hips forward, losing himself in tight heat, the skim of hands and the scent of sex. 

And Sherlock?

His appreciation turned the air blue.

~~~

In case it doesn’t translate, “to turn the air blue” is to let loose a string of curses. :D


	25. Prompt: New Year

A double 221b this time :)

~~~

London throbbed with party-goers, a giant pulse of celebration centred on the palace of Westminster and the iconic clock-tower. As the hands ticked down to midnight, the last minutes of the year bled into history, but John paid them no mind.

Time didn’t matter when he ran after Sherlock: breathless and near-euphoric on the adrenaline rush. His hands were steady and his leg pain-free as they skidded around a corner, slipping in the filth of the alleyway. Up ahead, their quarry stumbled, pitching a glance over his shoulder and crying out in alarm as Sherlock lunged.

They went down in a tangle of limbs, and John saw a clumsy punch scrape across Sherlock’s cheekbone before he joined the fray. A few fruitless struggles later, and he forced their perpetrator, unarmed and protesting, face down before pinning his arms behind his back.

The killer could not gain leverage to move, and the noise he made was almost a sob as John clipped the cuffs, “borrowed” from Lestrade, around slender wrists.

A half-hysterical laugh of triumph threatened to catch in his throat, and John sucked in a breath. ‘Not the fastest person we’ve ever chased,’ he murmured from where he sat over the man’s kidneys, chuckling as Sherlock settled on the suspect’s thrashing legs, lounging as if he were on a park bench.

‘Not the smartest, either,’ Sherlock replied. ‘He panicked and ran; no real challenge. Lestrade’s on his way.’

John was about to reply when the first sonorous toll of Big Ben rang out across the city. The swell of human noise from down by the river came over them like a tide: a distant cheer for both the past and the future. Fireworks erupted across the sky, filling the narrow stretch of night above them with vivid stars, and John tipped his head to admire their arc.

Sherlock’s body was a warm, strong wall behind him, and he leant back instinctively, propping himself up as their captive continued to mutter helpless curses into the mud. A moment later, he felt Sherlock return the pressure: a meek weight against John’s spine.

‘Happy New Year,’ Sherlock murmured in his ear, making John close his eyes and grin at nothing.

‘You too,’ he replied softly. It was tempting to claim the traditional kiss, but he held himself back. It was not his to take, and there were better times and places to face the risk of changing their status-quo.

For now, he was content. Other people watched fireworks and lost themselves in revelry, but he would take midnight-chases over such mundane pleasures any time. He rather be right here at Sherlock’s side.

Where he belonged.


	26. Prompt: Fire

Fire held a universal fascination: gold and vermilion, steel-white and cerulean all captured in a graceful flame. Few were not hypnotised by the dance of the kitten candle-flicker, or the home fire blazing in their hearth. Yet they forgot, as was mankind’s wont, that it was not mere heat and light. It was a beast that could be tamed, but at any moment it could slip its leash and return to its feral basis: a brutal and deadly inferno, purifying all in its path.

Sherlock was not prone to metaphor, but for John he was forced to make an exception. People looked at the doctor and saw only the domestic and docile, something warm and cheerful to gift their lives with passing tenderness. They saw a comforting healer and conveniently forgot about the killer beneath: a soldier still.

Yet the embers lingered, waiting to be fanned into something more. All it took was a point of ignition – a threat in a dark alley and the gleam of a knife – to unleash his fury. Retribution was a conflagration of gifted pain, and Sherlock’s attacker was on his knees, the weapon cast aside beneath the swift percussion of John’s bloody fists.

Panting breaths like opium smoke and adrenaline’s surge – a different kind of spark.

John kissed him, and Sherlock burned.


	27. Prompt: Hats

‘That’s disturbing,’ John murmured as he looked around the room: a vast space full of the blank, staring eyes of mannequin busts, each one crowned with some kind of headgear.

‘I know what you mean.’ Greg looked at his shoes. ‘It’s creepin’ everyone out. Who needs this many hats?’

Sherlock looked around with an intent expression. ‘One of these could be the murder weapon. High-grade wool felt, the kind used in millinery, is present in the victim’s trachea.’

‘So what are we looking for?’

‘Something soft and malleable, not a rigid structure. Look for creases, make-up stains, anything like that.’

The two of them began their search, leaving Greg in the doorway. Sherlock moved the quickest, dismissing many with a mere glance. John was less confident, and he found himself calling out possibilities.

‘Fedora?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘Trilby?’

‘Incorrect shape.’

John grinned, seeing a familiar form perched on a Styrofoam head. ‘Deer-stalker?’ 

There was a moment of pained silence before Sherlock muttered, ‘Ear-hat death-frisby. Wrong kind of wool.’

The hunt continued, gloved hands skimming over cotton and satin until, at last, John heard it. The small, semi-orgasmic noise of triumph that escaped Sherlock’s lips when his theories became fact.

‘Which one was it?’ he asked, looking around to see Sherlock grinning at a shapeless cap, its black fabric streaked with cosmetics.

‘The beret.’


	28. Prompt: Pen

When he was a kid, John’s mum used to shout at him for writing on his hand. If she could see him now, she’d probably have an aneurysm, though whether she’d be more upset about the crime notes all over him or the nude man straddling his bum and scribing autopsy details on his back, he wasn’t sure.

It wasn’t as if Sherlock had given him a choice. He had woken up one morning a couple of weeks after they’d become lovers to the feather-light drift of a biro over his arm. He had considered complaining, but Sherlock’s script was strangely soothing, and he always remembered that it was living skin across which he recorded the story of the Work.

A grunt, and Sherlock’s weight shifted, making John whine until the hot flash of a tongue lapped at the base of his spine and lower into that humid valley. The growl in his throat was involuntary, and his gruff ‘What are you doing?’ was met with a huff of laughter from Sherlock.

‘Spelling mistake,’ he husked, gripping John’s hips, his treatise apparently finished as something more enticing caught his attention. A moment later, and John found himself being worshipped as only Sherlock could: tenderly and completely.

It was weeks before they found the pen again, lost and forgotten under the bed.


	29. Prompt: Regalia

‘A first impression affects a person’s opinion of you for your whole acquaintance. It’s a stupid, human trait, but it’s something you can use, Sherlock.’ His mother, face bare of make-up, sat at her vanity, her fingers dancing over the pigments. ‘By changing what you wear, how you fix your hair, even how you speak, you can make people think of you in a different light. Hard or soft, strong or weak… Everything.’

‘Doesn’t it matter that it’s not real?’

‘That’s the point. If they do not know the real you, then how can they cause you pain?’

Naive and hopeful still, six-years old and thinking love was a given, he piped up again. ‘What if I want them to see?’

Her voice brimmed, her broken heart still spilling forth its pain from his father’s desertion. ‘Then you remove your regalia, darling, but be careful. Few deserve to see how fragile you are.’ She turned then, her pale eyes meeting his as her love enveloped him, soft as gosling down. ‘I hope one day you can reveal yourself to someone who will look at you and see your good heart, your strong mind, your talent and your troubles.’ She looked away, her voice turning to a whisper.

‘I hope they find you and know what it is to be so blessed.’


	30. Prompt: Sonnet

John slept, secure in the nest of their tousled sheets. He was lost to his dreams, and in the silence of the breaking dawn, Sherlock watched the milky light flow over the body he knew so well: poetry in repose.

His fingers wandered, ghostly and pale, down the rhyming couplets of John’s ribs – one paired with the other in a calciferous cage. Touch charted its trail across the paradox of a soft, vulnerable stomach framed by the hard chine of hips – strength and weakness in symbiotic dichotomy.

The hyperbole of John’s waist – a subtle dip in the straight line of his side – led Sherlock’s exploration onwards and around to climb the notched stanzas of his spine, reading the verse of power told in the metonymy of his life’s scars.

A kiss to the largest – an adoration to that monstrous apostrophe which could have sent John’s life into death’s possession, but instead brought him here, to this room and this bed.

Sherlock breathed out a sigh, easy and laconic in witness to the flow of John’s physical quatrains: a sonnet wrapped in living skin. His head found its roost over John’s chest as sleepy fingers combed their syntax through his curls.

And all the while the heart’s iambic pentameter pulsed its message between them.

Love’s endless beat.

~~~

Terminology:

couplet: A pair of lines  
paradox: a contradiction  
dichotomy: contrasting opposites  
hyperbole: An emphatic exaggeration  
stanza: a poetic verse  
metonymy: items closely related by context or theme  
iambic pentameter: poetic rhythm

Some of these words have been used more in the spirit of their meaning than their concrete definitions. No, I’m not sorry.


	31. Prompt: Chamomile

On the surface, John Watson was a man with simple tastes. Army life had stripped him down to the basics; there was no room in warfare for shades of grey. Perhaps that was why he kept his complexities so well-hidden. To the unobservant which, he had to admit, seemed to be everyone else in London, John was without nuance.

Sherlock knew differently. It manifested in the strangest ways, quirks of behaviour and unexpected complexities of taste. His base state was normal enough: like English Breakfast tea – strong, dependable, easy-going. That was John on a normal day in Baker Street, but a fractional shift in situation could bring new flavours to the surface. Adrenaline and the smoky spice of Russian Caravan, a case-solved and the bright, golden taste of a pallid Oolong, a long day at work and the bitterness of a noir Assam.

All were unique, which Sherlock found fascinating, but he had his favourites. 

A quiet night in, companionship and tentative peace. He would have loathed it, before John, but now Sherlock took a deep breath of firelight and chamomile and smiled to himself over his microscope.

Other people saw John in many different ways, but Sherlock knew he was the only one gifted with this insight – this interpretation of a seemingly simple man. 

John's perfect, complex blend.


	32. Prompt: Cut

A sanguine swell; claret ink on the paper of his skin. The blade trembled, arcing over the column of Sherlock's throat like the first whisper of a bow across the strings of a violin. Blood formed a perfect line in that brief instant before gravity took hold. Then it began bead and drip. Another shirt ruined.

'You think I won't do it?' the thug asked: young, not prone to violence but growing desperate.

'No, you won't.'

John's eyes shone with disbelieving mirth that, even on his knees with his life on the line, Sherlock was still so quintessential. Yet anything else – silence, civility – would strike genuine fear into John's stoic frame. If he thought that Sherlock had any doubt of his own survival, he would falter.

Yet John was not the one whose equilibrium trembled. 

A shift of tension, and Sherlock exploded into action, sinking a glass shard into his attacker's knee. The scream echoed even as Sherlock shoved the arm holding the blade away, spinning around in a flurry of fabric to turn the tables.

Gentle hands reaching out to check on Sherlock as he held the whimpering attacker firmly in place. 'It's shallow, might not even need stitches.' John smiled, shaken but courageous still, and Sherlock dipped his head in acknowledgement of his words.

A healer's blessing.


	33. Prompt: Semaphore

On the day Greg Lestrade got his divorce, he knew where it had gone wrong. Communication. All that time together and somehow they’d forgotten how to get the message across.

Him and his ex-wife could talk all day, blink Morse code, wave their arms in fuckin’ semaphore and still not understand a word the other one was saying. They’d had lust, fair enough, and companionship for a while, but that was over, and he was left to witness everyone else making the same old mistakes.

Well, almost everyone.

He picked up his coffee, taking a sip to hide his smirk as two of the biggest kids in London had some kind of bizarre, non-verbal argument in front of him. Sherlock rolled his eyes and lifted his shoulders in a shrug, his lips pinching in a grimace as he absently picked fluff from the cuff of his coat. An apology, maybe? Respect and affection underneath the dramatics.

John folded his arms, eyebrows up and chin down, weight distributed evenly on his feet: all thin irritation and frustration over an endless supply of something both softer and stronger.

They understood each other perfectly: no words required.

They might be shagging, or they might not. In the end, it didn’t matter. Greg could see the truth – what they were to each other.

Beloved.


	34. Prompt: Watercolour

Traffic lights gleamed like improbable supernova as the distant chime of the pedestrian crossing lost itself amidst the downpour. Domes of umbrellas rippled and danced, their unlikely arches smeared and amorphous: fractured by the water on the window-pane.

John watched it all, lost in idle reverie. Cardinal buses passed, drab and lacklustre beneath the gainsboro sky, and the rainbow of cars was reduced to muted, metallic shades. Even their lights were only embers, barely visible amidst the reflections which danced in the rippling puddles.

Everything looked as if it had been rendered in aquarelle, daubed with a clumsy brush and hints of diluted hues. When the sun came out, the city would glow, decked in the wealth of the passing weather, but for now it was nothing but a dismal dream, bland and unremarkable.

‘What are you looking at?’ Sherlock’s voice, so quietly curious, made John turn. It was such a different view; there was nothing nebulous or indistinct to be seen. Sherlock was all sharp lines and rich pigment: a plum shirt collar capturing honed clavicles in a striking vee, those silver eyes beautifully acute… Even the sensual curve of his lips and the curl of his hair were well-defined, as if he were the most solid thing in an ethereal world.

A man of absolutes amidst London’s watercolour blur.


	35. Prompt: Window

They had lived together for a month before John saw the real Sherlock Holmes: not a mask of arrogance or disdain, amplified for the benefit of others, but the face beneath.

At first it had been a glimpse: uncharted depths of humanity where John had expected indifference. However, as time went on, he saw those façades fall more frequently, revealing clues for John’s perusal.

Still, it was only when Sherlock perceived he was unobserved, like now, that the denouement was absolute.

The windows in the doors of Bart’s labs gave John a narrow view of Sherlock as he worked. Gone was the derision and hauteur. Instead, the man glowed, his pale eyes alight and the sharp edges of his expression softened by innocent curiosity.

It would vanish the moment he stepped through the door but, unfortunately, Sherlock needed the file in John’s hand. His time was up.

Pushing his way inside, John waited for the curtain to fall across Sherlock’s expression and bring the distant, indifferent man to the fore once more.

Instead, Sherlock looked up at him, his lips twitching in a smile as he met John’s gaze: unveiled. It was an exposure, a deliberate display that was humbling to see. Sherlock lied to so many people through action and speech, but now he showed the truth.

And John believed.


	36. Prompt: Addiction (441b)

‘John, _please._ ’

Sherlock twisted where he stood, his body moving in a familiar jig of restlessness as he clawed his fingers through his hair. His lips were parted and his eyes agonisingly intense: desperate. 

It hurt to do it, a test of strength, but one of them had to hold their ground.

‘No, Sherlock.’ He said it softly, reaching out to grab those fine, violinist’s hands and stopping the restless pacing in its tracks. Instinctively, his fingers found the radial pulse that pattered in the slender hollow of Sherlock’s wrist, measuring out the too-fast rhythm as Sherlock’s body drove itself to madness through its need.

A case had gone wrong, the body count increasing before they could catch the perpetrator. Now, hot on the heels of that bitter defeat came a tangled knot of intrigue even Sherlock’s great mind struggled to unravel. 

This was the response: black moods and deep cravings. What Sherlock wanted was the steel of cocaine on which to hone his mind to a point, what he would settle for was a packet of cigarettes, and what he had promised was to stay away from both.

He had done brilliantly, better than John had ever expected. It had been three weeks since Sherlock had last touched a nicotine patch, and John did not intend to let him break now.

With tender care, he began to sweep his thumbs in a horizontal line across the plane of Sherlock’s wrist, feeling the parapet of strong bones and the soft valley between the two. Initially, he matched Sherlock’s racing heart with each swipe before steadily slowing the pendulum of his motion. 

It was not something mentioned in any medical text, nor a method that would help overcome the chattering neuro-chemical urge in Sherlock’s head. However, steadily, John felt Sherlock begin to relax, his body responding to the unspoken urgings of the touch as his autonomous system began to syncopate with the input.

His pulse slowed and the tight knots of his muscles began to slip. John watched the drop of slender shoulders and heard the deep, indrawn breath of someone reclaiming their self-control. It was not much, a step back from the brink, but as Sherlock dipped his head to rest his brow against John’s, he was happy to claim it as a victory.

He did not care how long it took. He would stand here all night if he had to, lost in the whisper of air passing between Sherlock’s lips, but he would not let his friend face this alone.

Together, whether it was the abyss of depression or the sharp itch of addiction, there was nothing they couldn’t beat.


	37. Prompt: Chemistry

Nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, lesser quantities of hydrocarbons, sulphur and a soupçon of ozone: car-exhaust. Strong ribbons of fumes wove through the air above the roads, racing across the city and filling the summer sky with smoky haze. 

Parks bled with the cleaner scents of alpha-pinene, limonene and sesquiterpene – the trees adding their delicate touch to the sharp notes of freshly cut grass. Nature and artifice were locked in constant battle and cleaved ever in two by the flowing perfume of the Thames.

The river’s molecular formula was best left unconsidered: corpses, refuse, and other trifles in a suspension of silty water – less than savoury.

Yet more vast than that was the heaving cloud of every person walking the streets of the metropolis. From the symphony of perfume and cologne – too many components to quantify – to the base, animal undertone of uric acid serum in sweat, copious now in the August heat, humanity added their contribution to the stink.

Nicotine and tar, acetone, butane and a dozen other perfect poisons coiled in cigarette smoke, and the food from Speedy’s added its overture – mono-sodium-glutamate and spice, fat and carbohydrate.

The ebb and flow of it all assailed Sherlock’s nose, and he closed his eyes to savour it – this unique chemical smog. 

London in a single breath.


	38. Prompt: Fear (663b)

‘It’s a hole.’ John cast Sherlock a worried look, taking in the pallor of his friend’s face.

‘It’s a well,’ Sherlock retorted, biting out the words as if they were toxic.

‘We can’t see if there’s a body in it from here,’ John pointed out, keeping his voice soft and non-confrontational. Sherlock was not an easy man to read, but now he looked like he was fighting the urge to run. ‘Do you want me to check?’

‘No!’ Sherlock pinched the bridge of his nose, dragging in a breath as if he were drowning. ‘You might fall in.’

There was enough emotion in that statement for John to draw a his own conclusions. Sherlock clearly realised he had exposed too much, because he straightened his shoulders, flicking on his torch and training the beam on the ground ahead. 

‘Is that what happened to you?’

Sherlock faltered at the question, but eventually, John got a response.

‘I was five,’ he said, as if that explained everything. It did, in a way. Childhood trauma could be lasting, skewed by the vulnerability of a smaller physical frame. ‘There was a well in our garden. Dry, but deep. Mummy told us to stay away from it.’

‘But you didn’t?’ John bit his lip. It was rare that Sherlock spoke about his time as a boy. For him to admit to anything that could be perceived as a weakness or a mistake was practically unheard of.

‘I was running away from Mycroft,’ Sherlock replied with a hint of his usual disdain. ‘I went over the planks covering it. They were rotten.’ He swallowed audibly, a faint frown wrinkling his brow. ‘I broke my ankle when I hit the bottom; it was too deep for an adult to climb out of without assistance, let alone a child.’

‘Sounds like you were lucky not to land on your head.’ John winced, trying to ignore the tight sympathy clawing at the space beneath his ribs. It was easy to imagine a child with Sherlock’s vivid eyes and dark curls, pained, terrified and in desperate need of rescue. ‘How long were you down there?’

Sherlock pursed his lips, looking away in a manner which made John wonder if that was a question too far.

‘Mycroft can’t have been far behind, surely?’

‘He was distracted by father’s early return from work.’ Sherlock shrugged, breathing a sigh. ‘He assumed I’d wandered off to explore. I was down there for a few hours, which feels like an eternity when you’re five.’

The image in John’s mind made him want to drag Sherlock home, as if comforting him now within the safe confines of Baker Street could somehow undo the lingering trauma that he had suffered.

‘I’m surprised you didn’t delete it,’ he said eventually, trying to calm the whirl of his sympathetic thoughts

‘Childhood memories are more tenacious,’ Sherlock explained. ‘Besides, knowledge of a well’s interior occasionally comes in useful.’

The two of them slowed down as they approached the maw of the pit, similar to the one Sherlock had described. There was no wall surrounding it, no quaint bucket on a rope; it was just a hole waiting to trap the unwary. 

Cautiously, John leaned forward, gasping in surprise when a strong hand tangled in the back of his coat. Sherlock did not yank him away, but he held on tight as John peered into the darkness.

‘Empty,’ he said at last, easing back and saying nothing when Sherlock’s hand relocated to his sleeve, pinching the fabric tight as if he thought the well would shift and swallow John whole. It was rare that Sherlock sought out comfort, and John was only too happy to oblige. Still, Sherlock seemed more worried about John falling in than himself; did that mean Sherlock saw him as valuable, or vulnerable?

Sherlock glanced over, reading God-knew-what from John’s expression: his mind, perhaps, because a hint of a smile crossed Sherlock’s lips before he answered the unspoken question.

‘Both.’


	39. Prompt: Cupcake (663b)

It looked as if it had been abandoned, half-forgotten on top of a stack of books, but John knew appearances could be deceiving. It was probably poisoned, or drugged. His favourite treat – a double chocolate-chip cupcake – just left on the kitchen table for him to find? Deeply suspicious.

His caution lasted a little more than an hour until, despite all his reservations, John’s willpower snapped. Feeling as if he were taking his life in his hands, he bit into the cake, making a contented noise of delight when all he tasted was cocoa and sugar.

He had just swallowed the last bite when Sherlock returned home. Three steps into the kitchen, he stopped, and John busied himself at the kettle, trying to look innocent as moonlight eyes studied the table.

‘Did you eat that?’

‘What?’ John asked, glancing up at Sherlock only to turn away again.

‘John…’ Sherlock’s voice was close, and he twitched in surprise, finding himself pinned between the counter at his back and, pressed close in front of him, Sherlock’s long, lean body.

Cool fingers touched John’s jaw, making his pulse skitter and his breath catch. Sherlock had no concept of personal space, but he didn’t normally cross the boundary so completely. Not even in the post-case adrenaline rush, when the air turned thick and bewitching. 

Just like it was now, in fact.

The sudden swipe of Sherlock’s tongue at the corner of John’s mouth sent a lightning strike arcing along every nerve. His hips twitched and some noise he would never admit he made caught in his throat. This caress was a million miles beyond the boundary of friendship – not quite a kiss but something far more sensuous that was kicking John’s heart into double-time and turning his knees weak.

‘You’re a terrible liar,’ Sherlock murmured as he swayed back, reaching out to touch John’s mouth with his thumb before pulling it back to display the proof: melted chocolate. ‘I don’t think even Anderson could miss that kind of evidence.’ 

John wet his lips, trying to think. However, it was hard for his mind to over-rule his body, which was breathless, aching and hard in the confines of his jeans. ‘You – You licked me.’

‘Think of it as sharing,’ Sherlock replied with a smirk. 

‘Often share your food like that, do you?’ John murmured in a hazy voice.

Something flashed in Sherlock’s eyes, playful and promising, and John wondered if the cupcake had been an experiment after all. Not an effort to test a theory about the effects of drugs or even willpower, but Sherlock’s own unique brand of seduction.

‘You could always buy some more and find out.’

That should not have sounded like an invitation to slide between silk sheets and lose himself in tempting heat, not even in Sherlock’s sultry baritone. Yet John felt his body pulse, his faint disbelief lost beneath a hard tide of oh-GOD-yes.

Even better, more unbelievable and sumptuous to witness, was the answering flare in Sherlock’s gaze. 

John stepped forward, one hand reaching to tangle in Sherlock’s shirt and pull him close. He stretched up, not to lick or tease, but take and taste and claim.

It was as if every shred of rationality had fled. Sherlock all but melted against him, and John let himself kiss and be kissed – deep and long and satisfying – as if there were nothing in the world but the two of them.

At last he broke back, gasping for air, his voice wobbling as his thoughts continued to tilt and whirl. ‘I don’t think I want you sharing with anyone else,’ he managed to stammer. ‘Not if this is what you have in mind.’ 

His lips curved in a smile as Sherlock, breathless and needy, shook his head. He looked for all the world as if he were struggling, lost within the flux of his words. Eventually, what came out was half-plea, half-command: all John wanted to hear.

‘Bed.’


	40. Prompt: Body worship/Blow job

He was not prone to worship. Praise and exultation rarely escaped his mouth. Even now, inspired as he was, Sherlock traced his silent accolades across John’s skin with lips and fingertips. Each caress was a wordless adoration, punctuated by John’s quiet, breathy moans.

There was much to admire. Normally, bodies were of little interest to him beyond the evidence they could offer, but this bower of flesh was beyond any other. It cradled John himself, giving him form and substance, and it was the man within that made the construct beneath his hands so precious.

Warm skin stretched over muscle and bone: skin flushing to his command as his tongue darted over the crest and valley of each rib. The soft swell of John’s stomach, vulnerable and exposed, twitched beneath the downward skim of his palm.

John’s breath hitched, and Sherlock smirked against his waist, his eyes pressed shut to better devote himself as he ducked his head. A hint of teeth against John’s hipbone: a solid mimicry of what throbbed, hard and feverish, in Sherlock’s grasp.

‘Please! God, Sherlock, please! Ah!’

Salt and strength, John’s flavour distilled to its purest form against his tongue, and Sherlock hummed in appreciation. This man, this conductor of light, was worthy of his veneration, and he was happy to give it:

His earnest benediction.


	41. Prompt: Lurcher (a 211c)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiny weenie warning for implied destruction of dangerous animals.

John wobbled on his perch, pressing his back tight to the ridge of Sherlock’s spine. There wasn’t enough room for them both up here, but it was their only choice. It turned out the warehouse they were investigating was guarded by a veritable pack of dogs. One look at the army of growling, hungry creatures had shaken them into action. So here they were, sat on top of a precarious stack of crates awaiting their rescue.

‘Couldn’t we outrun them?’ he asked, seeing a half-bred thing with very short legs. He was sure he could beat that in a straight race for his life.

‘There are at least three Lurchers down there,’ Sherlock replied, sounding unconcerned considering he was a short drop away from being mauled to death. ‘Greyhound mixes. They’d have you on the floor before you’d reached maximum speed; the part-Doberman would have your throat out a second later.’

‘So, best not to risk it?’ John shuffled back.

‘No. They’ve been abused, half-starved and driven to hate people by their owners.’ Disgust laced Sherlock’s voice, and John smiled to himself: not so heartless after all. ‘They’ll have to be destroyed.’

The sound of squealing tires made John look up. ‘What’s that?’

Sherlock sighed as the police entered, kitted out with padding and tranquillizer guns. ‘Their executioners, and our cavalry.’


	42. Prompt: Safe

As a child, Mycroft knew that keeping Sherlock safe was an impossible task. His brother was always searching for more knowledge, more understanding, more stimulation – and his quest brought with it dangers aplenty. He climbed, both literally and figuratively, and he fell just as easily. Broken bones and brilliant eyes swimming with restrained tears; a racing mind with nothing to give it succour. 

Sherlock was the embodiment of his own destruction. It had never been a case of if, only when.

Years passed, and the danger increased. The gleaming blade of that vast intellect turned inwards, and Sherlock, isolated first by unkind peers and later by choice, fell victim to its edge. Cocaine was the breaking point, when Mycroft’s gentle guidance became a cage for Sherlock’s own good. He wrapped his brother in the bars of surveillance and locked away his funds. It was all he could do: tyrannical tenderness.

Then came Doctor Watson, and rather than turning away, Sherlock took his hand, leading him on a mad race – life and death and both of them laughing all the way – through London’s streets: two halves of a legend yet to be told. 

Through months and years, long absences and painful reunions, that spark did not fade.

Alone, they were nothing but embers of men, but together, they blazed.


	43. Prompt: Catfish (a 221c)

‘Don’t. Touch. Anything.’

John froze in the doorway, the shopping dragging at his fingers as he stared at what had been their kitchen table. Most of its surface was occupied by what looked like a cross between a meth lab and an industrial accident in a glass factory.

‘Having fun?’ he asked. ‘What exactly are you doing?’

‘Distilling toxins. A thirty-five year-old man who lived alone with no enemies was found dead. House locked, no signs of forced entry. Police ruled suicide by poisoning. Mostly because his blood looked like this.’ He held up a vial of what looked like ink, black and putrid.

‘Christ, how long’s he been dead? A week?’

‘Less than twelve hours.’ Sherlock’s eyes gleamed behind the safety glasses as he extracted some liquid from one of the flasks. ‘He kept rare salt-water fish. The aquarium took a considerable amount of his living space, his money, and I suspect it cost him his life.’

John hissed in protest as Sherlock cut open his finger and squeezed some fresh blood onto a Petri dish before adding a single droplet of venom. The response was instant: coagulation and lysis – blood turned to tar.

‘So what killed him?’

‘ _Plotosus lineatus_.’ Sherlock sighed and reached for his phone. ‘The idiot was stung by his own very rare, very deadly catfish.’


	44. Prompt: Potterlock

John blinked as the man he had known less than twenty-four hours laid out the details of John’s life: his service record, his limp, his therapist and his sibling. Nearly all right, but it was the last sentence, delivered in a deep murmur, that made John freeze.

Pale eyes met his gaze. ‘You’re a Gryffindor. You received exemplary results for your OWLs, yet you left to obtain Muggle A-levels. No doubt the better to pursue a career in non-magical medicine.’

Silence filled the cab, and John realised he was holding his breath. There wasn’t much room for magic on the battlefields of Afghanistan, not in the Muggles’ war. It lingered with him, but he never sought out other magic-users. Now it seemed the wizarding world had found him again, all in the shape of this intriguing, mysterious man called Sherlock Holmes.

‘That’s – amazing.’ John didn’t bother trying to lie. Sherlock would see right through him anyway. ‘You must have been at Hogwarts at the same time as me, but –’ He didn’t remember him, though, which seemed odd. Even as a kid, Sherlock would have stood out from the crowd.

‘I didn’t attend Hogwarts,’ Sherlock murmured, and that velveteen voice gained a hint of an accent, Continental and tempting as heat shivered down John’s spine. 

‘I was schooled at Beauxbatons.’


	45. Presence

The first time he feels it, that unfathomable weight of Sherlock’s presence, they have only known each other for five days. Yet his body has attuned itself. Near or far, he always knows that Sherlock is there.

Until the day that he is not.

John sits in the mausoleum of their flat, his bare feet freezing and his hand curled over his lips holding in the noises/words/recriminations/questions/doubts…

Sobs.

There is something else here, but it is a fading phantasm of memories. What will leave first, he wonders. The scent, perhaps. The bouquet of chemicals and clean laundry, fresh rain and whatever Sherlock put in his hair. It has lingered with them for so long, but already he senses its departure.

A knot of grief catches in his throat. His next breath dies with it.

His body plays tricks. He sees tall dark figures out of the corner of his eye and feels a magnetic pull down his right-hand side. A tremor across his hip announces an incoming text, but his phone’s screen stays blank. 

Life with Sherlock haunts him.

His legs spasms, and John gasps at the sensation, digging his hand into his flesh as he forces himself to focus. This is what’s real. This loathsome, hollow absence is his future now. 

Sherlock is dead, and he is never coming back.


	46. Prompt: Blue

Azure was for excitement and the thrill of the chase. A hobbled limp forgotten as he looked upon the dawn of a new life. Sparks of celeste, so pale they were almost white in the pool of those irises, carried their message of delight. John’s happiness was writ large for Sherlock to see, and he delighted in the whispered message of those brilliant hues.

Glaucous was the colour of John’s pain, drab with the shadows of his nightmares, the pain of his war-wounds and the depths of his grief. Touches of cornflower wilted in the darkness, given life only by the encroaching frost of his anger. Hard chips of ice formed, grim and dismissive, and not even Sherlock’s apologies could melt away the steel in his gaze.

Then, one day, the fury ebbed. Cautious friendship crept in on a denim tide, accented with a vivid starburst of cerulean. Not happiness, not yet, but contentment of a sort. 

Gradually softer, breathless sentiment began to unfurl, finding fruition in the hot press of lips and the stroke of tongues. Now, in the bed newly-christened as theirs, Sherlock watched the afternoon sunlight drench John’s face and read the fairy-tale in his half-lidded eyes. Cobalt, halcyon and sapphire: the rich, deep colours of lust and affection. 

John’s love written in a thousand shades of blue.


	47. Prompt: Habit

'Mummy would be disappointed.' Mycroft arched an eyebrow, allowing his expression to broadcast his disapproval: a finely crafted mask of purpose.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, a habit he'd honed to a fine art. One flicker of movement was adequate to convey every inch of his disdain.

'One day you'll do that and your eyes will fall out.' 

'At least then I won't have to look at your smug face,' he shot back, ignoring the laughable veracity of Mycroft's statement. He could see it for what it was: a chink in his composure. 'Forget it. I'm too busy for your case.'

'You're wearing a bed-sheet. What could possibly be occupying your time?'

A cleared throat from the direction of the bedroom made them turn. John stood on the threshold, leaning his shoulder against the frame. His arms were crossed over his chest, and one of Sherlock's robes wrapped around his form, revealing a deep vee of bare chest at its lapels. Ash blond hair stuck up in all directions, leaving very little to the imagination. 

'Morning, Mycroft. Staying long?'

Surprise suited his brother well, especially when it struck him genuinely speechless. Sherlock smirked, striding to John's side in a hush of cotton. 'He was just leaving.' He glanced back in Mycroft's direction. 'Like I said, I'm busy. Do see yourself out, brother.'


	48. Prompt: Dislocated

Forgiveness is found everywhere but where it matters most.

Mycroft's attention: distant, cerebral... His loneliness not as disguised as it once was. 

Lestrade, the most likely source of bitter vitriol, yet there are warm arms around his shoulders. A laugh. A squeeze that borders on desperate. Sherlock's wounds sting, healing to scars still. They hurt less than thinking of John, his punches, and the pain he could not voice.

Mrs Hudson, overjoyed and giddy. Guilt all round, balmed by cups of tea and subtle efforts at dusting. 

Molly: happy and helpful, but wary. She watches when others see no more than they wish. The masks he wears are transparent to her as a litany of disappointment echoes in his head – John's voice in dislocated refrain. She says nothing, but he knows what she observes.

Anderson, who scrutinises all even as he is on his knees, his theories scattered as his hands clutch the Belstaff in remorse.

And Mary. John's beautiful wife-to-be. The interloper.

But no, that is not right. That is Sherlock's role now. To John, he is the vile intruder, yet Mary looks upon him with fondness in her gaze. She is an ally, not an enemy. She will bring the shattered fragments of their old life back together.

With her help, Sherlock knows he can heal the breach.


	49. Prompt: Aurora

Sherlock stood by the parapet of the bridge, staring east, the crime scene behind him forgotten now the solution had been reached. He seemed oblivious to the bustle of Forensics, wrapped up in his own world, and John stopped at his shoulder, following his gaze upriver.

He considered asking what Sherlock was looking at, but to interrupt his solitude felt irreverent, somehow, like shouting in church. Instead, he bit his tongue, propping his elbows on the wall at Sherlock's side and searching for whatever had caught his eye.

Between the space of one heartbeat and the next, pearl grey gave way to a fiery knife-edge on the horizon. Shades of blue seeped upon the canvas of the night, and the wispy clouds above their heads caught ribbons of pink and white at their edges. The dominance of darkness fell to the wayside,: shadows in retreat. London's artificial lights faded to insignificance as the curve of the sun rose into view, painting a pathway up the Thames and pooling in the silver of Sherlock’s eyes.

John watched ghostly veils of gold cast their wealth across Sherlock's face and tried to remember how to breathe. Like this, the chestnut of his curls agleam and his expression lit by the epiphany of a new day, he seemed resplendent: otherworldly.

A deity of the dawn.


	50. 221B: Strut

Sherlock knew that a man’s walk was his signature. People’s movements were revealing; none more so than the way they progressed through their day-to-day existence. 

Mycroft sauntered, never in a hurry, never a hair out of place. He gave the impression that nothing was more important than his current occupation: perhaps he was correct. 

Lestrade shuffled, beaten and world-weary under the weight of the crime he saw every day. Only once the mystery was solved could he find temporary respite. His stride gained purpose, at least for a while.

Anderson would strut, false confidence peacock bright. He flashed his feathers and flapped his hands, a display to detract from his incompetence: transparent.

Then came John, hobbled and limping, the rhythm of his life thrown off by the vice of a tormented mind. Oh, his strength was as clear as sunlight, dazzling to those with eyes to see it, but his steps were those of a broken body far beyond repair. 

So Sherlock turned John’s thoughts from his monochrome life and showed him the thrill of the chase. He helped him forget his cane and his war wound, and John remembered how to move. Sherlock could almost hear the tattoo of the military’s drum – a soldier’s march: unstoppable.

And he was helpless to do anything but follow that same, unfaltering beat.


	51. 221: Hallucination

This wasn't real.

Sherlock knew that, and yet he allowed the conclusion to drift, harmless, across his mind. An endless case, too little sleep and food, and this was the result: his mind playing tricks on him. 

Wearily, he closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath of spicy cologne and warm wool. A weight distorted the air off to his left, the hole where a body should be pressing an invisible mass against his skin. Shimmers of warmth drifted over his hand – a hint of touch, fleeting yet treasured.

Amazing. That was – amazing!

Nothing but silence and a dark flat awaited him as he lifted his head, looking through the monochrome veils of the dawn. There was no one there to have uttered those words, but they resonated along his bones all the same, touching the cold corners of him with wistful heat. A press of lips, pure fantasy, against his temple, and Sherlock tilted his head in longing.

His mind made a ghost of a living, married man to offer itself comfort, and Sherlock was helpless to do anything but relish it: imagination made real by the lies of his exhausted senses.

After a life spent in solitude, he finally understood what it was to be lonely.

This wasn't real, but it was all he had left.


	52. Dagger

Cocaine crackled through his veins, turning every breath electric. His heart banged in exhilarated benediction against his ribs. This was how he was meant to live: fast and dazzling, a dozen steps ahead of everyone who thought themselves so clever with their petty little crimes.

A tangle of limbs, a swift upper-cut, and the game was done. Sherlock didn't feel the blood dripping from his shoulder nor the gash across his palm as he picked the thug's weapon up from the floor and glared at the unconscious body. A criminal stranger, not worth anyone's time. He'd let him go. Maybe in a few years, he'd grow into something interesting.

Days later, in his grotty little flat, the pain bloomed, hot and furious. It was an inconvenience at first – a warning he ignored. Then, infection. Hospitalisation. A close call that became the last straw. Mycroft had him in rehab quicker than he could blink, and grudgingly, Sherlock replaced a chemical addiction with an intellectual one.

As the years passed, he deleted many things from those crepuscular years, but the dagger served as his reminder. John thought it another of his many eccentricities – an unusual way to keep the bills in place – but Sherlock knew differently.  
It was his memento mori: a reminder that even he could burn too bright.


	53. Prompt: Never

Nameless. There’s so much emotion that John can’t begin to identify it. His heart is in free-fall, his stomach burns. His mind is blank and his fists are clenched, because after years of praying for a miracle, it’s finally come true.

Every day, he wakes up thinking “Don’t be dead, Sherlock” and every night he sleeps to tortuous visions of his friend broken on London’s unforgiving, fatal stones. He has choked himself on tears and guilt and bitter, brutal wishes that refused to come true, all in the name of a magic trick.

Violence is his first instinct in the wake of receding numbness. He doesn’t care that he’s in public, that other people will see. All he cares about is the visceral connection of his knuckles with flesh – real flesh – not a vision after all. The pain startles him, but not as much as Sherlock taking the blow as if he knows he deserves it.

Ebony lashes flutter in a barely suppressed flinch as John lunges forward, both hands spread as if to throttle him. Fingers twist, claw, curl in the lapels of that coat – that damn coat like useless wings as he fell – and haul Sherlock close.

Real. This is real, from the wrinkles that feather Sherlock’s eyes to the bruise already swelling on the familiar ridge of his cheekbone. He looks older, harder, less innocent, remorseful, and something in John’s gut shakes at the sight, robbing him of his strength. He sags forward, his face pressed to Sherlock’s throat as lithe arms tentatively enfold him in a welcome embrace.

Now isn’t the time for forgiveness. Endlessly, the seconds pass, but it’s a moment outside of time; an oasis from the concerns that await them. Vanquished, John savours it, drowning himself in Sherlock’s scent – London, rain, wool, sweat – and the warmth of his body, living after so long dead. Each breath feels like the first one John’s drawn in three years, thick with emotion and burning, but essential all the same. Right now, he’ll take it – he’ll take the ocean of confusion, agony and elation – because he never thought his wishes would come true.

Sherlock’s come home, but John’s the one coming back to life.


	54. Prompt: My John

Sherlock had always considered love bites puerile. How insecure did an individual have to be that they literally marked their lover as their possession? He had dismissed the act as juvenile until John came home with a petite dark bloom at the crook of his shoulder – easily hidden by a jumper but readily visible when he was padding about in his pyjamas.

Clearly, the girlfriend of the moment was in possession of esteem issues, though was she trying to warn off other women or Sherlock himself? Either way, it didn’t work. John had been single again a fortnight later.

Now, though, Sherlock realised his analysis had been superficial. He had focussed on appearance (obviously), rather than sentiment, and as such he had missed one, glorious facet. 

John enjoyed it.

His grin was evidenced in the tooth-edged kiss he bestowed on the hard ridge of John’s shoulder. The writhe of that naked body beneath his bare flesh, soft yet strong and perfectly flawed, threatened to derail his hard-won control. John’s gasping growls only sharpened the erotic crackle in the air, and Sherlock’s moan became a purr – far off thunder – as John’s fingers left bruises against his flanks.

That blond head was flung back, the column of his neck exposed in wordless request. 

John’s wish was his command.

Sherlock bit.


End file.
